Journey Home

Oh what a wonderful day :) After Mitzi's very hard decision to close the The Aurora Wings Blog Challenge a few months ago I can now break my silence and let you all know the challenge is back, how AWESOME is that.  The challenge is not a blog this time but as a FaceBook challenge, very easy to enter into and a lovely friendly community ready to say hi to you on a regular basis - AURORA WINGS FB and will go live on the first Monday of each month.  The theme will always be Anything Goes and if you pop into the Photos Section then choose Album you will find the area to enter your creative artwork.

For my first creation as part of the Aurora Wings FB Design Team I have chosen to use the image 'Journey Home' which I thought was rather appropriate as the Aurora Wings challenge journey is now home :) :) :) I do have a second reason too which is my youngest daughter is about to be deployed, she is in the British Army and so care packages will be the order of the day from home.  One of her passions is scuba diving so I know she will love this card, and knowing it is full of 'Mummy Love' too will hopefully help let her know how very special she is to me.  Although her deployment is not a 'Journey Home' until she has done her time it is a part of her journey of life which she has such a passion for.  I do love making cards with special purpose and spending that little bit extra time into creating something that has multi-layered meanings.

The image was coloured with Prisma pencils and Pan Pastels for the background, card base and die cuts with some of my every friendly Stickles for the bubbles.  The fish, oh the fish, so overworked and still not quite what I wanted but almost there.  Many years ago I had the awesome experience of swimming with a shoal of tuna fish, I was snorkeling in the Indian Ocean when I found myself surrounded by tuna, the whole area around me was a mixture of beautiful clear blue water and wonderful silver, and experience I will never forget.  The fish seemed to match my slow speed, some swimming beside me for several minutes.  I was transported to another world in both mind and body, I could imagine myself as a fish, as one of them and was held in awe that they trusted me so much to come so close, literally so close I only used my flippers to propel me along as using my arms would hit them.  OK back to the colouring, I first coloured them in light greys trying to capture the light bouncing off them as I remember the tune but that did not work, I then lines with a silver metallic pen but still not enough shine, finally I added silver from my Pan Pastels and that helped but still not enough shine.  In the end I used spray varnish and that brought them to life.  It is unfortunate the led to the problem of capturing the shine when it came to taking a photograph of the card but I hope you can imagine the end result.  I needed some texture on the card so used a die cut border which I then coloured along with the card blank base using pan pastels, the same colours I used for the background of the image.  Simple matting in black and orange for the image and with the die cut borders placed behind and then foam take to attach this section to the card base completed the project.

I am entering this creation in the following challenges : -

• Crafty Sentiment Designs W, 1E, SIO -  Water
• Catch The Bug W, E3, SIO - Fairy Tale/ Fantasy
• Ching-chou Kuik Digital Stamps (M,P1,E3,SIO) June - Under the Sea

Pool Party

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #60
Pool Party

This fortnights challenge of Pool Party has been chosen by DT sister Debbie

Debbie certainly had me scratching my head over this challenge theme as pool parties are not something we do much of in the UK.  After all sorts of thoughts I remembered I had this fabulous Mo Manning digi of a boy with his swimming ring - Bring on Summer.  I then found a free for personal use swimming pool image from Get Drawings.com  to use for my background which I added to the Mo Manning image in Photoshop before printing.
The images were coloured with Promarkers, fussy cut and and placed on my card blank when ready.  To finish off I added a simple sentiment which was attached with foam tape.

Challenges entered:-

• Crafty Friends Challenge 2W, 3E,  - #111 - Men/Boys (W2 of 2)
• Mo's Digital Pencil Challenge Blog M(1st Sat), SIR (must use Mo Manning hand coloured image) - June - Anything "Mo" Goes / option: For The Boys/Guys
• Seize The Birthday 2W, 3E, C5  Birthday + Option Of: Anything Goes (W1 of 2) 
• I love Promarkers  2W, 3E Must use Promarkers, #385 - Anything Goes with option of one for the boys (W2 of 2) 

Cross Stitch Rose

IKEsWORLD

Challenge 121
FOLDS (more than one fold)

Welcome back to the IKEsWORLD challenges :)  do pop on over to IKEsWORLD to join in the challenge, it is always so much fun and  Ike produces the most amazing stamps, everything from off the wall to cute and fluffy :) :) :)

I don't know what was in my head but all I could think of was black and white so I went with the flow for this challenge to keep my head quiet lol.  I tend to make all my cards square and buy them as card packs, not out of being lazy I don't think but more to do with having uniform cards for selling.  Making fun shaped cards if fun I agree but for the amount of time that goes into them and often having to make your own envelope too I am not sure they are fully appreciated by non crafters to the degree they should be and they are often hard to display too.  OK, so there is my reasoning for my card not being full of fancy folds hahaha, sorry Ike and Ginny :) :)

For this card I started by folding the right hand edge of the front of my card over a third of the way.  I then covered the left side of the card front and the right side of the inside of the card with a very old sheet of design paper from one of several pads I have kicking around that don't see the light of day very often.  The image was printed out in black and die cut with a black embossed die underneath it and finished off with black glitter sticky back dots.  This section was mounted on the front of the card with double sided tape.  A very, very simple and quick card to make so I feel a bit ashamed of myself but I do love the end result and hope you do too.

Ingredients:-

• image - Rose Stitch by IKEsART
• colouring medium - black stamping ink
• other items - design paper, black glitter stickers

I am entering this project into the following challenges:-

Unicorn Birthday

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #59
Lace and Pearls

This fortnights challenge of Lace and Pearls has been chosen by me :), I so love lace and pearls on cards but these days don't seem to make them often alas.

To make this card I first got my bundle of lace out, oh what a joy.  I collect half metres of lace material when I am out and about and this piece was bought in an Indian shop in Saudi Arabia, I just fell in love with the turquoise and gold and could not resist.  The lace was stitched to a blank base and then I added the frame on top which was made using 2 Spellbinder square dies.  This card is for my daughter and although neither of us tend to head for unicorns she came in one day and gave me this die she had bought when out shopping so I just had to use it here, on her birthday card, a nice way to say thank you :).  She also moaned to me sometime ago that I don't put daughter on cards (I do tend to put her name instead) and bought me the daughter die Christmas so again, this is the perfect place to use it.  I finished off with some other dies and flat back pearls.  All the dies were cut on white card and coloured to match in with the lace.

Challenges entered:-

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Hi there!!!

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #58
Ecology/Environmental/Conservation

This fortnights challenge of Ecology/Environmental/Conservation has been chosen by DT sister Sall. 

I found this challenge pretty hard to get my head around until I googled simple meanings to the theme then it all fell into place.  I chose the word Ecology, the balance of living organisms and how they use each other to continue their survival.   Bees are such an important part of our lives, without the wonderful job they do in the pollination of flowers they also give us that fabulous food item, honey, which is so good for us, for our immune systems etc. a natural sweetener which is so much better for us than refined sugar plus a whole load of other uses.  Flower in return give us so much joy in our lives with their beautiful colours brightening our days.  Of course I have only chosen this theme at a pretty superficial level but it is one that is close to my heart.

I created the background for this card with Brusho pigment powders sprayed with with water in lovely summery colours.  I then stamped the hexagon honeycomb shapes in black ink.  Next I stamped my bee, masked him and then stamped my flowers.  Colouring was done with Promarkers and when all this was done I added my sentiment.  Next I die cut my coloured image and used Distress Oxides roughly around the edges.  Rummaging through one of my drawers I found some orange mesh with white embossed bit on it so cut this to place behind my image layer.  To finish off I added some bee buttons I had, to make them flat I cut of the looped back, worked a treat :)

Challenges entered:-

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Coffee With A Friend

IKEsWORLD

Challenge 120
Embossing

Welcome back to the IKEsWORLD challenges :)  do pop on over to IKEsWORLD to join in the challenge, it is always so much fun and  Ike produces the most amazing stamps, everything from off the wall to cute and fluffy :) :) :)

Oh what fun making this card and I loved the chance to use a digi Ike drew a while ago when I requested a coffee cup lol.  How cool is it to be able to use images from the past again and again.  For this embossing challenge I embossed my craft card base and then used Distress Oxides to enhance with colour the embossed bits.  The second bit of embossing was with the foiling where I used and embossing folder rather aptly with the birthday sentiment and turquoise heat active foil, love the way this turned out with just a bit of bling for the card.  The image was coloured with Promarkers, nice to have them out again, don't seem to have played with them much recently. I also used some stamps I have with a coffee theme and these were used for the coffee bean border and centre of the heart plus a sentiment for the coffee mug.  I finished off with 4 half pearls in a lovely chocolate brown colour.

Ingredients:-

• image - I LUV COFFEE Set Set of 4 + 6 FREE Papers by IKEsART
• colouring medium - Promarkers and Prismacolour
• other items - sentiment stamp

I am entering this project into the following challenges:-

• Pile It On - M, 1st Sunday + bonus theme 3rd week, Use theme & at least one other challenge, Winners posted 2nd Sunday - (May) Beverage
• The Paper Players - W, C4 - #440 Friendship
• Creative Knockouts W,2E,C8 #296 Friendship
• DL ART Thankful Thursday Challenge M 1st Thurs 3E #243 May - Coffee, Tea Or Chocolate
• Seize The Birthday 2W, 3E, C5  Birthday + Option Of: Texture (W2 of 2) 

Jacquard Birthday

 International Art & Soul, a challenge which has been put together to incorporate any type of craft, paper, wood, flowers, recycling, glass - the world is your oyster :).  Come on over an join us with you artwork :)

Challenge #57
Birthday

This fortnights challenge of Birthday has been chosen by DT sister CraftyGirl.  I had so much fun making this card and trying to get the hang of masking.  This awesome stamp was part of the Creative Stamper set with magazine #107.  The stamp so reminds me of all the needlework my Mum and Gran used to do often using images like this and a variety of stitches.

Once I had made my masks I then got t stamping then coloured the final design with Promarkers.  I was trying to get an antique theme going on (thinking again of my Mum and Gran's needlework lol) and think, looking at the end result I did capture what I was trying to do.  A small edging stamp was used to to complete the framing of the card and finally the Birthday sentiment also from the Creative Stampers magazine.  I then used the Tim Holtz distressing tool to roughen up the edges (my stamping is not very straight on the edges so this is a cool way to disguise this and make it look part of the end result).  The completed layer was then mounted on black card.  Leaving the card base white did not look right so I ended up getting some purple children's craft paper and scrunching it up into a small ball to create a really distressed look. Once flattened out I used this to cover my card.  Finally I added some flat back pearls to the flowers and a couple of die cut butterflies in black.

Challenges entered:-

• Pattie's Creations - M, 2E, SIO, include an image (MUST always use digital or stamped image) – APR - No. 157 - FLOWERS   Ends May 2nd  
• Aud Sentiments Challenge 2W,E5  Must include a sentiment #225 Happy Birthday Sentiment (W2 of 2) + A DT Call
• C.R.A.F.T. W,5E #511 Distress Yur Project
• Moving along with the Times 2W,3E #96 Floral (W1 of 2)
• Passion For Promarkers Challenge W - must use promarkers - #490 - Favorite Stamp or Digi - (This stamp is certainly going to be a favourite, it is versitile, suitable for so many styles and fun to colour added to this is the memories of my Mum and Gran each time I use it )